


Thunderbird

by sciencemyfiction



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, kinkmeme request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencemyfiction/pseuds/sciencemyfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the kinkmeme:</p><p>Frustrated that he can't catch the angel who banished him on the night of the Apoclypse, Zachariah pays a visit to future Cas and mocks his humanity as he beats the shit out of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thunderbird

It is 2013, and the world is a fetid corpse of some half-born thing, neither living nor dead.

Zachariah leads with the simple sound of his footsteps, the seeping sensation of his presence, which Castiel can feel from all the way at the end of the path. The frail little body that houses the shell of a fallen angel shudders, as if cold, but aside from that tension in his shoulders, he doesn’t move, doesn’t acknowledge that Zachariah’s even there. 

“You’re pathetic.” This is Zachariah speaking, and Castiel does not deny the truth of it, his head hanging lower, his posture that of a man well and truly defeated. It’s cold, it’s raining and wet, and Zachariah stands unaffected by it all, while Castiel shivers, cradling a single joint of weed in the protective warmth of his hands. The cherry, that simple, pure fire is what he’s trying to save. It will burn out eventually, and all his effort will be meaningless, but that’s where he puts his focus anyway. The embers glow softly in this dark, and they are otherworldly and beautiful. 

Castiel sees yet another facet of this marvelous, fucked up world his Father created and abandoned. Castiel sees proof that God is alive; that God is dead. 

All Zachariah sees is a pile of schmutz that an idiot lit on fire. “You know that? You really are just—sad. I feel pathetic having to look at you. Eugh.” He shudders dramatically, brushing off some of the rainwater that has accumulated on his coat. 

The smile that turns Zachariah’s way is bright-eyed and empty. Castiel has finally gotten a sense of humor: one for which every punchline is, _and we’re dust_. His false cheer does nothing to conceal the flat nothing that is his battered and reduced self. His hollowness. His empty humanness. Still, he’s fighting here, fighting to protect this small and easily snuffed out light. And he is living off of that light, too, without it the pain would be too much and he would have to kill himself. 

Maybe it is the light that is killing him.

“What can I say? You’re just…revolting, Castiel. You used to _be_ something. Look at you now.” Zachariah’s tone has gone distant, his eyes boring deep, deep through those layers of careful nonchalance that Castiel has hidden himself behind. He stares right down into the flickering, dying embers of Castiel’s grace. His spark of life is the only thing that remains. It is a faint and embarrassing spark, barely worth noting. 

“Look at me,” Castiel agrees, as he draws a toke from the joint and, still protecting the ember with half a thought and both hands, lets his head fall back when he exhales. The smoke pours out of his lips like an exorcised demon, and his eyes are glassy and dull, brittle chips of acetone paint in a worn doll’s face. His skeletal grin comes back, more like the baboon primal expression of bared teeth, fear, than anything humans would make. “Juuust look at me.” 

Zachariah’s eyes narrow. He waits to see if Castiel is bluffing, pretending at weakness, is planning to fight. 

Castiel stays leaned back, baring his throat to Zachariah implicitly, unafraid and unmoving, his eyes squinted against the rain as he stares up into the patchy clouds that hide the sky. “You’re right,” his voice is more vulnerable now, some old thread of the Castiel that Zachariah trained in combat shining through. “It is sad.”

“Are you even capable of thought anymore?” Zachariah inquires, genuinely curious. He crouches down now, takes Castiel’s throat in one bony-fingered hand, holding him in place. With the other, he peels his fallen comrade’s eyes wider open, staring into them, searching—for what, he doesn’t know. He squeezes, just a bit, and Castiel doesn’t struggle, doesn’t make a sound until the pressure fully cuts off his air. Even then, it’s just a dull rattling noise, throat clicking as the body that Castiel inhabits displays a greater instinct for survival than he is currently capable of. 

He stares back up at Zachariah’s clinically calculating face, and doesn’t answer, lips parted as if to take a breath. 

“You’re mad,” Zachariah decides, settling his other hand around that offered throat, and squeezing in earnest. “It drove you mad, didn’t it?”

The flesh beneath Zachariah’s fingers cannot stand against his power. Once, it would have been an angel he sought to crush, here. Now it is barely a man, and his skin bruises very easily. He makes a harsh, rasping sound as his body fights to breathe, and only here, now, does he forget the joint, dropping it into Zachariah’s lap as his hands flutter up to frantically scrabble against the iron grip Zachariah has about his windpipe. Castiel’s mouth works silently, his body arcing up into Zachariah’s chokehold, instinct fighting to free him. 

At the last possible second, Zachariah releases him, shoving him harshly down into the gravelly mud, and watches him curl slowly on his side, coughing. His breathing comes loud and whistling, harsh through his injured throat, and when Castiel finally raises his head, it’s with tears of pain collected at the corners of his eyes, and a bright, burnt-out smile on his lips. 

“It would be so much easier, Zachariah,” he says, very seriously, a light note of amusement crawling ugly through his battered and bruised voice. “It would be so much easier if I was.”

The words are flippant, and they smell just the right shade of arrogant to remind Zachariah why he had always mistrusted Castiel. Here was an angel who’d thought he knew better than his brothers, better than his Father. Here was an angel who had willingly relented his power for the sake of some foolish concept like free will, who had fallen not for the reasons Lucifer fell, but the reasons that God had walked the Earth, once. 

Zachariah remembers all too well how that story ended: God’s earthly vessel, dead. 

He isn’t one to be derivative, but he feels that that’s the appropriate outcome here, too. So he straightens, standing into the torrents of rain sluicing off his suit, and he curls his right hand into a bowl, catching the liquid. “You talk a good game,” Zachariah smiles, skull-like and vicious against the pressing dark closeness of the sky. Castiel stares up at him with some faint emotion sobering his face, trembling in his eyes. “But you’ve never really been hurt, have you? Not since you Fell.”

Castiel swallows, but doesn’t answer. Zachariah’s cupped hand is beginning to overflow with rainwater. 

“You chug your pills and your liquor and your poison, but all that’s under your control, isn’t it? You haven’t been shot,” Zachariah says idly, watching the slight flinch as Castiel expects to discover what it’s like to be shot alongside the word. “You haven’t been stabbed, you haven’t broken any bones, have you?”

Once, Castiel had complained that Zachariah had no imagination. He doesn’t seem to have any opinion on the matter now. He opens his mouth to answer, then slowly nods, agreeing. He has not known the suffering that his body is capable of, now that he cannot reach beyond it. Probably he has been careful not to let it get damaged, unsure how difficult it is to heal a body without the power of Heaven behind his fingertips. 

“Well, tell me, Castiel,” Zachariah’s smile gets warmer now, now that he’s found his angle of attack, found the way to cause the most pain for the least effort. “How’re all those conflicting treats getting along inside your tummy? ‘Cause I can’t imagine that’s healthy for you.”

The water cupped in Zachariah’s hand transforms into acid, bubbling and churning, and below him, Castiel convulses, clutching his stomach and making a deep, guttural sound of pain that shivers from Zachariah’s head to his toes. He smiles benignly, watching as Castiel curls tighter, tighter, and then jerks as his body tries to expel the sudden unpleasantness from within him. Retching, he falls into the unpleasant rhythm of his quivering guts, coughing up blood, bile, absinthe, some half-digested pills. There’s barely any food in there, which suggests Castiel really doesn’t know how to take care of himself. 

Zachariah stands over him, cupping that boiling, bubbling bit of acid water in his hands, waiting until Castiel is unable to breathe, white as a sheet, blood and drool and bile on his lips, stomach clenching on emptiness. He heaves, making a weak, wet sound as he gags on the lack of anything else to vomit, and falls on his shoulder in the dirt, too drained to rise. Then, and only then do Zarariah’s fingers part, the acid transforming back into water as it pours from his hand to the Earth. 

He toes Castiel in the gut, roughly, delighting in the soft, pitiful groan that rises up from Castiel’s lips in response to that sharp little tip of Zachariah’s shoe. Oddly, the sound becomes a breathless little laugh, lingering and chest-aching, and Castiel shakes his head, laying where he is and waiting for Zachariah to do worse. 

Instead of staying silent, Castiel growls stubbornly, “You must be here for a reason. So, either kill me or get the hell back upstairs, would you?”

That Castiel is still capable of such blatant, bull-headed machismo in the face of his own utter powerlessness is the last straw. Zachariah has suffered insolence after insolence from Dean Winchester, has suffered snide comments, backstabbing, has suffered insubordination from Castiel, rebellion, disobedience. 

He is the one with the power, here, and he is unwilling to let Castiel leave with even his shadowed, false, dying smile intact. 

Zachariah twists his wrist, grabbing Castiel’s left foot with a psychokinetic tendril of power, and snaps his fingers, exploding every single metatarsal bone in that foot with barely a thought. Gratifyingly, Castiel’s façade of confidence shatters, too, dissolving into a pitiful scream. It’s a high, whining sound that drops down into agonized, panting gasps as he abortively tries to crawl away with only one good leg to help his hands pull him over the muck and dirt. Zachariah’s rage was white hot and uncontrollable for a second there, but now he focuses it like a laser, now he knows exactly what he wants to do. 

With a laugh, Zachariah advances, following along for a little while as Castiel inches uselessly closer to the camp he has chosen to be a part of, the camp of muddy humans struggling to stay alive in a hopeless void. He easily keeps pace, though he lets Castiel frantically try to distance himself from the source of his pain, walking slowly but steadily after him, whistling a happy tune.

“You sure do move a lot,” Zachariah sighs, feigning boredom. “What’s the rush, Castiel?”

He gets no answer, not beyond the brief flash of terrified, half-crazed eyes, prey-animal eyes over Castiel’s shoulder as he dares a look at Zachariah before renewing his efforts to escape.

With a yawn, Zachariah pins Castiel’s wrists where they are, trapping him facedown in the muck. This time he grabs Castiel’s spine with that psychokinetic force, preparing to crush each vertebra individually, one by one, to the song of Castiel’s despair. Zachariah has finally decided how he will end this being, this insignificant pissant that has so often stood between Zachariah and his simple goals. 

And then, miraculously, hilariously, _infuriatingly_ , a wave of pure, blinding energy strikes Zachariah from not far off, whipping out from a tree trunk. He has a split second to see the dark countenance of Dean Winchester, suffused with regret, hatred, the same dark hopelessness as Castiel is carrying around, before he is swept back to Heaven. 

This is why, when he has calmed down enough not to froth at the mouth when he speaks, he sends Dean even further than he’d originally meant to, unwilling to risk sharing that embarrassing accident with the headstrong little asshole. Dean Winchester cannot see rebellion left in his future self, cannot see happiness in Castiel. He has to feel as chewed up as they do, as powerless. 

Zachariah trembles with rage, and does his job, soothing himself with the memory of burst capillaries and blood vessels, marrow spilling out of ruined bones. He wonders if, in 2014, Castiel will have a limp when Dean meets him. 

He hopes so.

**Author's Note:**

> I am weirdly excited to have finally written a fic with Zachariah being a dick in it. Have been meaning to for a while!


End file.
